Exotic propulsion Dream

OK, this is goofy, but I just had a dream about a method of exotic propulsion that has a kind of half humorous, half intriguing aspect.

As you might recall, there's been talk of the Planck length Quantum Foam that might compose the smallest yet known environment, in which fluctuations, or turbulence in the quantum field create a type of foamy surface.



The propulsion in my dream used a component of the Casimir Effect to flatten out this foam, and when the foam rebounded to this energetic foam configuration, prodigious quantities of energy were released.

In addition, tachyons were released and condensed and these pulses enabled the 'drive' to exceed faster than light speeds (at which tachyons exist). Then, the strange part. I log on to Wiki and it turns out that tachyons do condense; at least in one exotic theory.

Nutty, huh?

See, this is what happens if you spend too much time here.

Incidentally, in this dream, this 'quantum foam' drive was discovered as the mode of travel in a craft that was found in a deep cavern and attributed to a race of 'Ancient Ones'.

The drive was 'explained' to me in even greater detail, which included some kind of 'grabbing' like a ratchet in a rapidly spinning water wheel, which enabled the drive to have an 'inertial damping' effect, resulting in the ability to hit FTL speed and then return to 'impulse' speed, almost instantaneously. Tapping into this used the energy inherent in the 'fabric' of the quantum universe, so it did not require tremendous acquisition of energy to propel physical craft. I won't go into the 'Tachyon Tunneling' details and stuff because, well, it's already silly enough.

reply to post by Badge01


Wow, your dreams certainly come with some detail. Interesting stuff though. Often times we can trick ourselves into underestimating our own ability. Seems you have been reading up on it so much that your brain decided to let you in on something it had figured out.

Heh, yeah, but realize, and my bad for not stipulating this in my previous post - this is just word salad. None of this has any scientific basis, it's just a bunch of exotic concepts conflated into 'sci-fi' mumbo-jumbo.

Still, it was a fun dream.

The dream also went into detail about the planet that these space farers inhabited and how they had made a fundamental mistake in their quest for space travel, and explained the steps that a 'space voyaging' civilization must take to evolve.

That part was cool.

Thanks for the comment, but, nah, my brain was just babbling, uh, coherently, but it makes no scientific sense.

whoh,was that a dream?,you sure you didnt hear something on the radio/tv whilst you were sleeping?,cos this seams to be what your dreams implying,
the quantum foam whose constituents only appear for a moment before being annihilated again are actually capable of being captured by the casimiri effect before they are annihilated?.

a method for harvesting zero point energy, fascinating!.

whats also interesting is that dr casimiri published of his effect in 1948 according to wiki,and quantum foam was devised in 1955!

maybe it is alien tech!!

whats also strange is that i had a similar dream when i was about 12,they showed me about the craft and stuff before taking me to the engine.but as they starting explaining it i woke up!!!

ahhh its fun to live in the 21st century!

[edit on 2-12-2007 by welivefortheson]

[edit on 2-12-2007 by welivefortheson]

reply to post by Badge01


HAHA, to be honest with you, this is the first time I've heard of such "foam." You probably could have said that I could fill my gas tank with it and never have to fill it again and I'd have believed you.

EDIT: Brain fart

[edit on 2-12-2007 by SantaClaus]

reply to post by welivefortheson


Well, the idea of finding a craft created by a long-dead ancient civilization is certainly not new. It was part of the plot of Frederik Pohl's Gateway.

I've never read the novel, but I'm familiar with Pohl and knew of the Heechee, but I probably have it somewhere. I inherited a bunch of sci-books when a friend in college purged his collection.

No, I wasn't watching a TV program, but I read and watch stuff related to space and sci-fi all the time. The mind probably just juggles this stuff and spits it out during dreams, though, perhaps it may organize things that you don't consciously understand, and I'm not a physicist nor can I grokk "teh maths" at all. I'm a biologist/pathologist.

Though I'd heard of the Casimir Effect, I don't recall any connection to the quantum foam stuff, though I scanned enough of wiki several weeks/months ago and posted on the foam here at ATS, though a quick search doesn't turn up my post. (?)

Bear in mind that image I posted is not a 'picture' of the quantum foam, it's merely a CGI representation of the theory, with wavelets and splashes, representing the creation and annihilation of mini-black holes and 'stuff'. There's no, uh, microscopic pix of it that I'm aware. It's much too small.

I'd have to look up the Planck length, but it's pretty small. 10e-30-something, don't know the units, but typically meters. I do know that an electron is a 'femtometer' and that's about 10e-15, so it's a lot smaller than that, so the best EM-microscopy which uses an electron beam would be completely unable to resolve anything. In fact it may be that you can't observe it, only predict it due to equations on gravity and SoL.

Do you have a wiki page that talks about Casimir-Polder and foam. I didn't see that in the Casimir page.

reply to post by Badge01


wow,this is more proof to me that the subconscious mind is in charge!,so many people have said it,da vinci accreted his genius to being able to access the dream world!!

i know as little as you about these two concepts,it just clicked in my mind(or rather submind!) after reading the links that the casimir effect can stop the quantum foam from being annihilated by anchoring it into existence!

im very much an amateur lover of physics,especially the far out stuff so i dont know how to work out if this effect is true,but hey maybe weve just discovered something!







[edit on 2-12-2007 by welivefortheson]

[edit on 2-12-2007 by welivefortheson]